ON THIS DAY AUGUST 23

79 Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, Roman god of fire – it goes on to destroy Pompeii.

1305 Scottish rebel William Wallace is given an excruciating death by his English captors. He is drawn behind horses for 8.5km, hanged, stretched, disembowelled, castrated, has his heart, lungs and organs torn out before him and then beheaded and quartered for repeatedly refusing to recognise England’s sovereignty.

1839 Britain captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for war with China.

1939 The Soviet Union becomes the last European Power to sign the Non-Aggression Treaty (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) with Germany following the failure of all Soviet attempts to form a wide anti-Hitlerite coalition, as negotiations with Great Britain and France bring no tangible results.

1948 World Council of Churches forms.

1954 First flight of the widely used Lockheed C-130 Hercules.

1973 A hostage crisis in Sweden where hostages sympathise with their captors, hence the term “Stockholm Syndrome”.

1987 A 15-year-old runaway hijacks a Royal Dutch Airlines flight and demands $1 billion. Police capture him in Rome and free his hostages.

1992 Wilhelm Verwoerd, grandson of apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd, joins the ANC.

1993 The Motsuenyane Commission finds the ANC guilty of torture in its camps and says it should apologise.

1997 Zambian police shoot and wound former president Kenneth Kaunda at an opposition rally in Kabwe.

2011 Libyan strongman Muammar al-Gaddafi is overthrown.

2013 A riot at a prison complex in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, kills 31 people.

2015 A 12-year-old boy trips at an exhibition in Taiwan and rips the $1.5m 17th-century painting Flowers.

2017 The US Navy fires Vice-Admiral Joseph Aucoin as commander of the Seventh Fleet following a series of embarrassing collisions in Asian waters.